Re: Meeting, Linus, et al.

MJang wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 15:06 -0700, Jonathan Day wrote:
> 
>>I'd also never heard there was quite so much antipathy
>>towards OSDL. If the bitkeeper talk was on the money,
>>then they have some serious explaining to do.
> 
> 
> Seems like the bitkeeper talk was a bit understated - Perens is quoted
> as calling Linus an unpleasant name on this topic -
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/15/perens_on_torvalds/ 
> 
> I assumed that someone had direct contact info for Linus. The email
> address published with kernel updates is torvalds at osdl dot org.
> 


First off - it's "The Register", admittedly the "Weekly World News" of the tech community.  Second - has anyone actually 
verified this?  Third, last that I heard he is a bloody Debian maintainer, and I think that says a lot in this regard.

I am looking for the actual emails in question.  However, it's pretty retarded of Bruce to say "BitKeeper was foisted on 
to kernel developers"  if he did say it.  The Register is a fun read, but not always truthful.  Foisted indeed.   As if 
Bruce has a controlling interest in the kernel and some rogue took it into some system that he didn't like.  Bloody 
Debian is his world.   He can have all the purist philosophical discussions there that he wants.  No one is using any 
sort of compulsion to demand that people use Linus's kernel.

So, I find these quotes highly suspect.  I would like some aimslist or some other e-mail archive evidence on all sides 
before I believe that this is a huge problem.  It smells like hit-generation / ad-sales fodder.

I also heard what Greg said last night:

  a.  The general consensus [among maintainer, i.e. people responsible for continuing development] is problems w/ 
management @ OSDL.

  b.  Regardless of intent or screw up, Tridge did seemingly manage to single-handedly stop kernel development for two 
weeks already.  Larry, OSDL, Tridge and Linus at some point have all made decisions assisting in reaching this end. 
However, if anything is childish and immature - it's responding to stupidity w/ stupidity.   If OSDL could have 
commercially licensed BitKeeper for every single kernel developer worldwide for a reasonable amount of money, that would 
have been a good idea.  Then the reverse engineering of the protocol would have been legal anyway.  At that point it is 
a legally protected right.  Furthermore, according to Larry the lionshare of his business is with Windows users.

Going forward GIT looks pretty interesting.  It's generating a lot of talk.  Political infighting - IF Bruce said that 
(which I doubt at this point) - is likely to be like flies buzzing around a dung heap.  Just walk away.  The community 
can sustain this sort of problem.  What is done, is done.  We lack an SCM capable of managing the kernel.  So be it. 
Larry made one, and he intends to pay his bills off of it.  Linus chose to use it, and regardless of the debate we have 
BitKeeper to thank for the massive cooperative efforts that the kernel developers created and maintained in 2.6.  Greg 
liked BitKeeper, and you all hopefully heard what he had to say about binary drivers - particularly the more popular 
ones currently available.

So this is all damn hot.  I hope that somehow we can create a tool to permanently end the BitKeeper debate.  All those 
bitching people, and not one built a system to address Linus's needs and replace BitKeeper.  Now that people can bitch 
about pointing fingers, Linus is starting to write his own.  Why?  The same reason he started writing his own kernel. 
It really makes me wonder what sort of bitching people will do about git.

So, this is an appeal for someone to post links to the supposed quotes.  And I will look for them as I have time and 
bandwidth,


Sincerely,

   Joshua

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